


This Is the First Day of My Life

by waketosleep



Series: Author's Favourites [7]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Amnesia, Angst, Gen, M/M, Non-Chronological, Paralysis, Post-Movie(s), Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-23
Updated: 2011-07-23
Packaged: 2017-10-21 16:24:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/227219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waketosleep/pseuds/waketosleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life for Charles has become very confusing, but it continues nevertheless.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Is the First Day of My Life

**Author's Note:**

> I watched _Memento_ for the first time recently, and sometime later I thought, 'man, what if that had happened to Charles?'

Charles blinks and he is in the kitchen, the worktops at eye-level and that's not right at all. He looks down and flexes his hands and he's gripping the sides of a wheelchair, wearing leather gloves. What on earth is he doing in a wheelchair? He makes to get up, tries to, attempts to make his brain tell his feet to move from the footrests of the chair but all is still and dead, and he can't feel the brush of his trousers on his legs or move his toes inside his shining shoes.

"Raven," he gasps, "what--"

She turns from the stove with a spatula in hand. "Charles," she says, "did you read your letter this morning?"

"Did I?" he asks. "Why am I in a wheelchair?"

She drops the spatula and moves to kneel in front of him; she grips his forearms and looks him in the eyes and says, "Breathe, Charles."

He takes a deep breath, holds it, and lets it go slowly. "What," he tries again, but she shakes her head.

"Maybe someday it'll take," she says, and then, rubbing her hands up and down his arms once, she goes on: "You had an accident. When we were in Cuba. Remember Cuba, Charles?"

He remembers going to bed the night before they were to leave for Cuba. He hardly slept. Then nothing. How long ago was Cuba?

"Charles, your accident. You were shot. You were paralyzed and you can't remember anything that's happened since."

He senses the truth in her words. They seem familiar. Raven wouldn't kid about a thing that serious. "That's right," he says faintly, feeling every sound across his tongue. "I have amnesia. I can't remember things."

Raven nods slowly.

"And my legs don't work?"

She shakes her head, then squeezes his shoulder and stands up again.

"Dining room. It's breakfast time. We're having scrambled eggs."

Well, it's nearly the only thing she can cook. Charles turns his chair around without knocking his senseless legs into anything and wheels into the dining room. All of the children are there, and they smile at him and bid him good morning.

***

He is in the ensuite bathroom adjoining his bedroom. What was he doing? The toothbrush sits on the edge of the sink. Charles runs his tongue across his teeth, tastes the lingering feel of toothpaste and puts away the toothbrush in its holder.

He looks around, wheels himself out into the bedroom in the chair he can operate without thought, somehow. The drapes are closed but don't glow with morning light. He was going to sleep, then. He does feel tired.

Charles negotiates his way to the bed, turns back the covers and pushes himself onto the mattress. He hopes he hasn't neglected any of his bedtime routine.

***

"Where is Moira today?" Charles asks Raven. He's been staring out a window in the study at the rolling, green lawns. He thought it was November but apparently he's been mistaken.

Raven looks up from the desk. "She's back in Washington, Charles."

"When did she leave?"

Raven hesitates. Raven never hesitates. "A while ago," she says finally.

"Doesn't she visit occasionally?" he asks. "She did like the children. I know she must be busy with work, but really, she spent weeks with us that I can recall."

"When she left us," says Raven, toying with a pencil, "you took away her memory of where we are. To protect us."

He took away her memory? He'd give it back now, if he could; it seems cruel. "Protect us from whom?" asks Charles.

"We're not popular," she says, "since Cuba."

Cuba. Cuba is like something he can almost see in the distance, faint. "All I can remember of Cuba is the night before we left," he says.

She smiles. "Yes, I know."

"How is Moira?"

"She's fine. I go to Washington sometimes and check on her."

She probably spies, wears disguises, which Charles finds he's surprisingly fine with. "Is Erik out with the children?" he asks.

Raven says nothing, writing in a ledger. Charles waits for a response, wonders if she heard him.

Charles looks around himself and he's in the study. It's warm outside and Raven is doing something at the desk.

"What are you working on?" he asks, moving closer.

"Accounts," she says with a smile. Her smile is tired, Charles notes with some guilt. He wishes he could do more.

***

"Oh, hello, Hank," says Charles. Hank's back is to him, bent over a lab table.

When he turns around, hulking in his oversize lab coat, Hank looks bemused. "Hello, Professor," he says, and sets down a chart he was writing on. His nails clack faintly on the floor as he approaches Charles and crouches so as not to loom so much. "Raven says the letter is working."

"What letter?" asks Charles. "Sorry, I have problems remembering."

"I know," says Hank. He sighs and it sounds half a growl. "I wonder if I can manage to run a scan on you today."

"Are you trying to fix my brain, Hank?" asks Charles fondly.

"Trying is the operative word."

Charles focuses on Hank and feels a wash of misery and frustration come off of the boy. "It's not working?"

"Something will work," Hank insists.

***

He feels a cool breeze on his face and he's outside on the grass, a plaid blanket over his lap. His legs don't work anymore, he knows suddenly, and he uses a wheelchair. He sighs.

"Professor," says Sean, who is standing to his left and has inexplicably grown about three inches. Dead leaves swirl past Charles' chair in the November wind and he wonders if Sean woke up this morning with all that extra height.

"Can I help you with something, Sean?" Charles asks.

Sean pats the shoulder of a young girl at his side. She has shockingly white hair and wears a nametag that says 'Ororo'. "Well, since you're here, we could use a pointer or two on focus, Professor."

"Surely you learned enough of that from being pushed from great heights?" Charles teases, and Sean smirks as Charles begins to talk to Ororo about how to concentrate. He puts delicate feelers into her mind to guide her in the right direction, and he sees her sudden, bright smile when she understands.

"Well?" Charles asks lightly, and Ororo smiles hugely as her eyes turn white. She looks up at the sky for a moment and Charles watches the clouds dissipate and feels the temperature rise.

"Unseasonably warm for autumn, isn't it?" Charles remarks to Sean, and Sean ruffles the girl's hair.

"Thank you, Professor X," says Ororo sweetly, with a glance up at Sean.

***

There is a tumbler of scotch in his hand and Raven is sprawled, loose-limbed, in one of the large armchairs in the den, legs hanging over one of its arms. She has a mostly-empty glass of her own, resting on her stomach, and Charles realizes she's drunk.

"I just," she says, and then stops. "What's it like to be you? Every five minutes is a new five minutes, your first five minutes. Charles, how does a person live that way?"

He isn't sure himself. He holds up his glass and watches the firelight pick out amber flames dancing in his drink, through the crystal. He catches sight of the chessboard on a table in front of the fire and wishes he still had the attention for chess, wonders if Erik would try to play a game with him anyway, if he asked.

"I'm not sure I'd ever do anything if I were you," she says into her drink.

Charles sips his drink and twists his lips as a verse springs to mind. "Do I dare disturb the universe?" he quotes. "In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse."

That is when he realizes he's drunk as well.

Raven snorts. "I always did think Eliot was depressing."

"On the plus side," says Charles, "I no longer hold any truck with solipsism."

She hums.

"I mean, clearly the world continues while I'm asleep or otherwise not present."

"Is that reassuring to you?" she asks quietly.

"I think it must be sometimes," says Charles. "I can imagine it also must be terrifying."

"Liquor certainly evens you out emotionally," observes Raven. "Normally when you bring up metaphysics you say it's uniformly awful."

Charles turns that information over in his head while he takes another drink. His brain floats in his skull. "Christ, even my philosophical arguments are getting circular and retreaded?" he asks. "Time to throw myself off the roof."

"Go ahead and try," says Raven idly.

"What a lovely sister you've turned out to be!"

Raven shrugs. "It'll take you at least ten minutes to get there, so you'll forget what you were doing on the way."

"Fuck," says Charles, and drains his glass.

***

The clink of cutlery against china and the murmur of conversation reaches his ears and Charles blinks down at half a plate of what appears to be dinner. He eyes his roast beef and cuts a piece, looking up at the table as he raises his fork to his mouth.

Raven sits to his left, Darwin--Darwin!--to his right. Twelve other people in all are sitting at dinner: Hank sits awkwardly at the far end of the table with space for his elbows; Alex is on the other side of Darwin, Sean down the row. There is no sign of Erik and Charles wonders why he's missed a meal. The other people are strangers, children between the ages of six and maybe seventeen. They all wear nametags. He can just read the nametag of the little girl next to Raven, whose name is Ororo. A boy named Victor foregoes knife and fork to pick food from his plate with a long, sticky tongue.

Charles stares around the table in wonder.

"Something wrong?" Raven asks him softly.

"Who cooked this?" he manages, unsure what else to say.

"I did," she said. Charles looks at her askance and she sticks out her tongue. It tastes good and Raven can hardly cook.

"Ms. Raven does lots of the cooking," Ororo pipes up. "Sometimes we all help."

Raven shrugs her eyebrows rather smugly at Charles as she chews her green beans. Charles abruptly wonders what year it is.

***

Cerebro is a rush Charles thinks he'll never forget. He squeezes his eyes shut as his mind rushes through the world, mutants lighting up like beacons in his consciousness when he singles them out. But didn't Shaw and his men destroy the CIA's Cerebro? Charles pauses a second to consider this but the urge to carry on is too strong. He feels like he has been part of Cerebro forever. He doesn't even remember putting the helmet on.

But then he's pulled back to his own body and the machine winds down. The helmet lifts from Charles' head and Hank is grinning down at him. "I guess that's enough for today. Raven will kill me," Hank says.

"That was hardly any time at all," Charles protests. He can remember like it was yesterday the first time he used Cerebro. Hank in his ill-fitting human body, Raven looking awed and Erik arching an eyebrow at him before the helmet went on. Where is Erik, anyway?

"It was longer than you think it was," says Hank amiably, stepping back as Charles rolls down the ramp to stop in front of the computer bank. A printout several pages long is coming from the top of the printer and Charles blinks at it. Apparently Hank was not exaggerating.

"Is this Cerebro on the estate?" Charles asks, looking around.

"It's in one of the basement rooms near my lab."

"When did you have time to rebuild it?" Charles wheels around the periphery of the room, trails his fingers along the rounded wall and is deeply impressed.

"Here and there," says Hank.

Charles turns and grins at Hank. "Can I test-drive it?"

Hank chews his lip with large teeth. "Professor. You just did."

He rips a long ream of paper from the printer and holds it up. It is covered in coordinates.

"Oh," says Charles, crestfallen. He feels an itch inside him for that heady rush of using Cerebro, just one more time. It's been so long, he can barely remember how it felt.

***

Darwin is telling a story, from the sound of things. Charles glances around discreetly and as the only other person in the bunker is Alex, setting up targets, it seems that Charles is the audience for this story.

Charles remembers that Darwin died, but not that he came back. He traces his eyes over the boy's expressive face. Fascinating. The implications of his adaptive powers if he's strong enough to regenerate himself like that!

Darwin cuts himself off mid-sentence and Charles figures he's been caught out not listening.

"Professor?"

"Darwin," Charles breathes, because he can't shake the awe.

The boy huffs out a laugh and rubs a hand over the back of his head. "I regenerated myself a long time ago," he says before Charles can ask. "It was... itchy. I guess. Now I'm strong enough to handle Alex's energy bursts without crumbling to dust. I've come a long way."

If he were more of a betting man, Charles would guess they've had this conversation before. "You certainly have," he manages. His throat feels tight.

"Okay, I'm ready," Alex calls as he strides toward them. "Get behind the line."

Charles follows Darwin to the rear of the bunker, behind a thick line painted across the floor. Alex stands ten feet in front of them, shakes out his hands like a gunslinger and fires precision blasts at his targets across the room.

Charles sits back in his chair and wonders if he's outlived his usefulness to his students.

***

He stares at his toothbrush as though it might levitate. He's fairly certain that is not among his abilities, though, and eventually he reaches out to grab it from the holder.

Perhaps he can get ready for bed before he forgets what he was doing. Perhaps he should give into what is probably inevitable and write himself a checklist to follow. Perhaps he's already done that and left it somewhere.

As he brushes his teeth, he wonders when Erik is going to come upstairs.

***

Charles smiles at the young lady before him and his hand moves to his right sweater pocket to close around his stack of Polaroid photographs. Hers is the second from the top, taken outside as she flashes white teeth in an ear-splitting grin. She scuffs her shoe in the gravel patiently while Charles glances at the name he's written on the bottom of the photograph--Ororo--and flips it over to the back to see her power--weather manipulation, isn't that wonderful?

"Ororo," he says graciously, and she beams. "You had a question?"

"Yes," she says brightly. "I'm trying to make lighting strike targets." She points at some upright logs across the lawn. "But I can't quite hit them."

Charles notes the scorch marks on the grass. Well, it seems to be spring, so new grass will probably grow. "Right," he says. "May I touch your mind? It's faster, if perhaps a bit disor--."

Ororo is already nodding like she's heard the speech before. "I need _help_ ," she says, and her frustration tinges the air.

Charles laughs and scribbles down a quick note on his pad before putting his fingers to his temple.

***

"What has happened to my mind, Hank?" Charles asks idly. He drums a pattern with his fingernails on the arms of his chair.

Hank is attaching electrodes around his head; Charles hasn’t bothered to ask him why, although perhaps Hank’s already told him anyway.

"I think you’ve come unstuck in time," says Hank, delicately placing an electrode near Charles’ left ear.

Charles thinks about that and supposes that it feels correct. He feels disoriented, as though he’s been dropped from the sky into this moment. Probably he always feels that way. Scouring his surroundings for clues is difficult.

"Where did you come up with that?" Charles asks.

"Just a book I read recently," says Hank. "There; we’re done. Now relax, okay? I’m going to take some passive readings."

***

"I was going somewhere," he says, his hands loose against the wheels of his chair as he rolls to a slow stop in the corridor.

"You wrote it down," says Raven beside him in a sing-song voice. "Look at your notepad."

Charles pats his sweater pockets and there is his notepad and pencil in the left one, which is unexpectedly calming. He flips open the pad, past pages of scribbles, children's names and powers, and finds a schedule on the last page in his own messy script. He looks at his watch. One-thirty is time for lessons after lunch, and isn't that maddeningly vague? Charles wants answers. He flips another page and there it is: 'meet Alex in the bunker'.

Charles leaves the notepad open in his lap for reference as he wheels forward, heading for the elevator.

"I'll see you at dinner," Raven calls after him.

***

Raven looks up from behind the desk when Charles rolls into the study. He wastes no time.

"Where is Erik?" he demands, feeling agitated beyond reason. "I can't feel him anywhere on the estate."

Raven looks at the window like she wants to jump out of it and then puts down her pen. "He's not on the estate."

"Where's he gone? He didn't leave a note."

Raven throws herself back in her chair. "Don't you read your letter in the morning? Why isn't that sticking?"

"I can't remember," snaps Charles, and she flinches.

"He's not on an errand," Raven says as she stands up. "He's not _here_."

"Where is he?"

"Nobody knows," she says as she walks toward him. "He's alive, that's all we know. He's gone, Charles."

"I don't see how that could be," he says.

Raven reaches down, grabs his right arm, and shoves his sleeve up roughly. "Look."

Charles stares; he has a tattoo on the inside of his forearm. It's in his own handwriting and it says, 'Erik is gone'.

"When did he leave?" he asks, tugging his wrist out of her grip to stare at his arm, run his finger over the tattoo. He knows it's real, he wouldn't have done this if it wasn't real. He's fairly certain.

"What does it matter?" she says, and it's true, what does it matter?

"What day is it?" he asks stubbornly.

"Wednesday." She crosses her arms.

"What is the _date_?" he asks, spitting out the 't' sound.

Raven shifts, awkward and nervous. "January 24th." She licks her lips. "Nineteen sixty-seven."

"What," Charles says faintly. How have _four years_ gone by?

"He left-- _we_ left you on the beach in Cuba after the thing with Shaw, and the missiles," she says, and Charles thinks about _missiles_ for a moment before deciding he'd best stay on topic. "Me, and Erik and Angel, and Shaw's old people. When Moira and Hank managed to contact us, told us that you had amnesia and were paralyzed, Erik and I came back to you." She kneels in front of his chair, finally, and grabs at his hand with both of hers.

"Charles, he was by your side for six months and then you told him to leave. You said you couldn't handle the guilt on him, that it hung around him like a cloak, and you told him that if he'd left you once he could do it again."

Charles blinks back tears. "I love him," he whispers.

"You do," she agrees, combing fingers through his hair. "You always did. And you had to tell him to go four different times before he finally decided to take your advice. And so he left again, and he hasn't come back since."

Charles looks up at the ceiling as his heart breaks.

"He used to write to you but I stopped showing you the letters. It didn't seem worth it; you'd just get upset all over again and then forget anyway." Her voice sounds almost deadened, like this is well-traveled territory.

"I can't believe he left me twice," Charles tells the ceiling. He looks back down at Raven, whose eyes are shining with unshed tears. "I don't believe a word of this," he says flatly.

Her face shifts to anger and she drops his hand, pushing to her feet. "Oh, for fuck's sake," she says, scrubbing the heel of her hand furiously over her eyes. "Read my mind, then!" She points at her head.

"I never--" he starts, but she cuts him off.

"Do it. Just do it. Just end this and look inside my mind."

He does, then, because she's glaring at him, and it's true, it's all there, her intact memories. Argument after argument: Charles and Erik, Charles and her, even angry letters she'd penned to Erik while wondering if they ever reached him. He pulls out of her mind before he succumbs to the urge to drown in all of her other memories of the past four years he's missed.

Charles rubs a hand over his face.

"I stayed," she says into the silence. Her voice wavers.

Charles raises his head, drops his hand back in his lap. Raven's face is anguish and he's done that. "I'm sorry," he says breathlessly. "I'm so sorry, Raven."

She takes a deep breath and turns on her heel to march back to the desk. "You always say that," she mutters.

***

He wakes and stretches his arms, twisting until his shoulders pop, and then sags into the sheets. Charles is in his bedroom, in his bed. The other side is empty and cold. He sits up, his lower half dead and dragging and he feels disconcerted. There is a wheelchair next to the bed and he looks between the lump of his feet under the covers and the chair for a moment, unsure what to do.

There's a folded piece of paper on the nightstand; it's creased and worn as though it's been read and refolded many times. When he picks it up, his own handwriting on the flap says, 'Read me'.

When he opens up the paper, it's a letter, in his own handwriting, and he feels trepidation as he starts to read.

>   
> This is a letter to myself, Charles F. Xavier, written with assistance from my sister Raven. In November of 1962, I went to Cuba with Erik, Raven, Moira and our young students with the intent of stopping Sebastian Shaw in his efforts to escalate the United States and the Soviet Union into nuclear war. We stopped Shaw with no losses to our side, only to nearly be obliterated by the combined efforts of the American and Soviet fleets offshore. I am told that Erik's and my fundamental philosophical differences led to a divide on that beach, and in the ensuing chaos I was shot in the back; Raven claims it was an accident of Erik's doing.
> 
> Erik left the beach with Angel and the rest of Shaw's mutant cohort that day, driven to pursue their own philosophies of mutant equality taken by force. The bullet severed my spine and left me paralyzed from the waist down; Hank and other doctors agree I may never walk again, and so I use a wheelchair and have for several years now. In addition, trauma related to my ordeal on the beach and the extensive surgery that followed caused me to develop anterograde amnesia, which became evident a few weeks after returning to Westchester. I have no memories beyond the night before we left for Cuba and am unable to form new ones, meaning I now live five to ten minutes at a time. I can still learn things by rote, however, meaning I can use my wheelchair and have developed a system of organization. Raven and Hank hope that by reading this letter every morning I may instill into my brain some of the pertinent facts of my life.
> 
> Thus:  
>  I am paralyzed and use a wheelchair;  
>  I continue to live with Raven, Hank, Alex, Sean, Darwin (who has returned to life) and several new students at the manor;  
>  We run the manor as a school with the older children acting as instructors;  
>  Erik is gone, undetectable via telepathic efforts, and will not be returning to us;  
>  Some important details I have opted to indelibly mark my skin with, for immediate reference;  
>  I write notes to myself to track my day: I keep a notepad in the left pocket of my cardigan and labeled photographs of the new students in the right.
> 
> Life is confusing, but it continues nevertheless. Have as fine a day as you are able, Charles.

Charles stares at the letter in his hands for a moment before carefully folding it and replacing it on the nightstand. He eyes his wheelchair.

 

THE END


End file.
